


A New Song in My Mouth

by yenisey



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gateway Sinning, M/M, Religious Conflict, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2019-11-16 15:02:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18096626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yenisey/pseuds/yenisey
Summary: Wherein one’s faith falters and another’s blossoms. And those who do not find themselves crushed to dust might be forged instead into diamonds.Also, some sinning.





	1. Chapter 1

_Create in me a clean heart, O God._

_– Psalm 51_

He realises that something has changed when he starts making his bed. In and of itself, that’s such a stupid detail. It would barely warrant mention during any other phase of Dismas’ life–or at least those when he had access to a bed, which was not always a given.

Rolling out of his bunk as usual, scratching beneath his smallclothes, he tugs the pile of threadbare quilts upon the mattress into something resembling order. He fluffs the pillow, tucks the edges of the quilts beneath the mattress to ward off inquisitive spiders, and then something hits him.

He’s making his bed. He’s treating his bunk in this dingy, low-ceilinged barracks as _home._

He’s tucking in the blankets to keep the spiders out because on some subconscious level, he’s started to believe that he’ll make it back to this bed each night. That stepping outside may not mean resigning himself to a shallow grave.

For the first few weeks, a nightmarish blur, he was certain every time he stepped past the threshold that it would be the last. He recalls those moments with no small measure of shame: every time his voice had quavered, every time he’d run screaming through the dark. Every time he’d merely been tempted to.

He’s outlasted many of the others now. Whether they’d been lost in the field or resigned to a cell, he’d outlasted them. So why the hell not make his own bed.

Though he’s relatively certain the bunkroom is empty, he still checks a glance behind himself. He feels oddly self-conscious, like he’s worried someone might have somehow seen that revelation smack into him. Like he might have physically flinched. 

For the moment, the barracks are quiet. It’s late morning, and those who are on reprieve know to use their daylight hours to their fullest. Dismas has always been a late riser, though, unless he was on the road. When life hands you a bed, he figures, best sleep in it. You never knew if you’d be sleeping in a ditch tomorrow.

Even though there’s no way anyone could have seen what happened to him just now, it being an intangible thing and all, he’s glad it happened in an empty room. Nobody needs an audience for that shit.

Giving himself a sniff, he decides he can last another day without bathing. Nobody in this shit-pit smells _good_ , and he smells less bad than some. So he changes into fresh woolies, yanks up his trousers, and shrugs into his coat. He opts for a heavier scarf, mindful of the creeping late-autumn cold, and heads out into the hamlet.

\--//--

He can’t recall who’s on duty this week, other than it isn’t him. The Heiress up in her panopticon, she’s got herself a regular stable of mercenaries now. At first it rankled him a little to get passed over for jobs, at least the easier ones. He felt a sort of kicked-dog defensive bristling, a _hey, I was first._ Like a coyote baying over kill that wasn’t even his. But he’s got savings now, meagre as they are. When his pockets are heavy, Her Ladyship is fucking welcome to hand out jobs to the greenhorns. 

Desperation was always his primary motivator, at least until it turned to full-on avarice. He isn’t desperate now.

The one downside to that is that it leaves him with very little to do.

This little shitpot hamlet has the bare minimum of creature comforts required to keep the serfs from mutiny, but that’s it. And after a couple of months, Dismas has sampled–and been disappointed–by each and every one. The Heiress has lent him access to the great library of the Estate a few times, and while he was bowled over by the sheer quantity of books and just how esoteric the subject matter between their covers could be, he’s hesitant to ask that favour often. Favours are a currency in a town this small. A favour from one’s employer doubly so. He won’t put himself in debt to that woman over books.

Besides, it won’t do to develop a reputation as an idle reader. Not in a place like this, with the company he keeps. The type of mercs who take jobs like this willingly have a nose for weakness. They can sniff out a chink in any armour. By virtue of simply surviving as long as he has, Dismas has acquired the barest hint of a reputation as an individual not to be fucked with. He isn’t about to upset that balance.

Lacking anything better to do, he checks in at the tack shop to see if the leather goods he’d ordered are ready, but they aren’t. When the shopkeep tells him this, he flinches back as though afraid of some violent reprisal. 

Dismas raises his palms in a disarming gesture, his tone easy when he finally speaks.

“Relax, lad,” he says. “The roads being how they are, all sorts of things are in short supply. My patience ain’t one of ‘em, though. I got time.”

The boy–and he is a boy, his beard naught but peach fuzz–merely nods. A commotion from outside cuts off any reply he might have. Which is fine by Dismas. By his measure, the conversation had concluded. He pokes his head out of the shop and surveys the village square, drawn by the sound of heavy hoofbeats.

It’s the Heiress, rode in from her grounds on a towering horse as black as polished onyx. The thing’s easily eighteen hands tall. It’s a Friesian, he thinks. Rare and expensive. Dismas isn’t a horse guy, but he’s stolen a few in his time, so he took a moment back in the day to learn the valuable ones. 

The horse stands still as statuary as its rider surveys the square. Her hair is bound up beneath a hat that bears a short, gauzy veil that doesn’t entirely conceal her features. Possible she’s one of them noblefolk with an aversion to sunlight, since there’s no damned point in trying to hide her face in a town she bloody well owns. Especially not while riding in on a horse that costs more than every building in the village put together.

She’s looking at him, though. That’s never good.

“Dismas,” she calls. “Pray tell, has your leg recovered? Are you well?”

His leg’s been fine for two weeks. She seems to have a short memory for this sort of stuff, like her brain can only hold onto a few details at any given point about each of them. He wonders briefly if this is what it felt like for Barristan and Reynauld, a faceless one in a rank of many. Anonymity by numbers.

“Aye, miss.” She prefers they not use her title or any honorifics in the hamlet. Weird bint. “Need an able hand, do we?”

He steps out of the shop and lets the door swing shut behind him.

The woman makes a noncommittal sound in her throat. It seems to say to Dismas _yes, but you’re the closest thing available, so I’m making do._

“It’s the supply coaches,” she explains from the saddle, not even deigning to dismount to speak to him. “One of them is late.”

He ticks his eyebrows up in consideration. “How late?”

Beneath the sheer veil, her mouth thins. “Late enough.”

He understands. Out in the wider world, where mass starvation isn’t one bad winter away, coaches can be late. Here, they can’t. Presuming it’s wrecked somewhere, every minute they aren’t racing toward it is a minute some brigand scavenger could come across it first. Provided they hadn’t been the ones to wreck it in the first place.

Rolling back his shoulders, he turns his eye toward the road. The last of the morning frost has melted, meaning everything will be coated in a fine layer of shit-brown mud. 

“Alone, then?” He doesn’t look at her even though he’s curious. One of the many lessons he learned in his distant youth: act less interested than you are. People hold interest over your head.

The woman laughs. Actually laughs in his face. It stings, but he doesn’t let her see that either.

“By God’s wounds,” she says. “Of course not. The knight is on his way. You two work well together.”

Dismas isn’t sure he’d call it that. The two of them have worked a lot together, but that isn’t the same as working well.

“I’ll fetch my things from the barracks, then.” He gives his scarf a thoughtful stroke. He’d rather not wear the thick woolen one on the road. 

Her Ladyship makes a small noise, then tilts her veil in her regard of him. “Intriguing,” she says.

“Eh?”

“I assumed a man like yourself never left his armaments behind. I’m surprised to find you’ve grown so comfortable.”

That sends a different kind of bristle–this one real and physical–up Dismas’ back. Oh, he’s armed all right. But the peripherals are damned heavy. It isn’t a matter of comfort. It isn’t a matter of a _man like himself_  choosing to go unarmed. Anger rises hotly in his cheeks. This woman treats him like a child sometimes. 

“We’ll report back when it’s done,” he says. Then he turns and stalks off, hands in pockets. 

He doesn’t wait to be dismissed. After all, he isn’t Reynauld or Barristan. And this isn’t the army. 

\--//--

Once he’s kitted out, it’s a short walk to the bridge out of town. Everywhere in the hamlet is a short walk, really. That works against him sometimes, a man who’s used to a bit of solitude, a bit of legroom. 

Three stone arches span over the river, the bridge across the water old and mildewed. There’s an abandoned guardhouse on the far end, though the gates that once sat astride it are missing, the doorway gaping like a toothless mouth. What was ever worth guarding in this place, anyhow? 

He waits there for the knight, boots shifting restlessly on the old stone. He’s itching for a smoke–and itching really is the right word, because he feels it just beneath the surface of his skin, begging to be scratched. He abstains from scratching, though. Smoke clings to your clothes, gets in your hair. He doesn’t mind that most of the time, but never on the road. Never when a hint of smoke on the breeze is enough to give away your position to those downwind, be they man or beast.

As always, he hears the knight coming before he sees him. Reynauld de Sancerre. Those Norman names are a mouthful. It always used to make the girls in the Old Bell blush when Dismas pronounced that shit correctly. 

It’s reflex, the way he straightens. It isn’t that he’s self-conscious about his height. It is what it is. But there’s a particularly _towering_  quality to all that armour. Especially since the bastard’s got his helm on already, rendering his face unreadable. 

“Dismas,” he says. And that’s all the greeting he offers. If he has any particular feelings about working alongside Dismas and no others, he doesn’t show it.

“The old gal’s briefed you, I’m assuming?” He cuts straight to business. He’s tried pleasantries with Reynauld before and they bonk off his armour like slingstones.

“I’d hardly call our patron an _old gal_ ,” is Reynauld’s answer. 

Dismas takes that as a yes. 

With a final, fleeting regret that he couldn’t have that smoke, he pulls his scarf up over his mouth and nose.

“Why do you do that, bandit?” Reynauld’s voice is tinny behind his faceplate. “Surely every soul in this village has seen your face by now.”

Dismas doesn’t have a good answer for that. “Force of habit.”

He sets off across the bridge, and just before his bootsole hits the old stone, he takes a deep breath. He holds it in across all three of the arches, only exhaling once he’s reached the other side. His lungs are burning from the effort by the end of it. His first breath comes as a bit of a wheeze, his scarf billowing.

“And why did you do _that_?”

This one he does have an answer for. 

“Wishing bridge,” he explains. “Not every bridge is a wishing bridge, but we had one where I grew up. They say if you hold your breath all the way across and make a wish, it just might come true.”

Reynauld’s silence feels judgmental. But to his surprise, the knight doesn’t immediately scoff the subject away. With a metallic creak, a grind of armor on armor, he turns back to regard the bridge through his helm.

“And how did you determine this one is a wishing bridge?”

Dismas barks a laugh. “Ain’t for me to decide, mate.” His voice goes a little lower, though. Thoughtful. “I just hope it is. I figure we ought to hold onto any scrap of that we can muster, eh?”

It strikes him then that he can’t imagine Reynauld as a child. Can’t imagine him learning fairy tales and superstitions on his mum’s knee. He was probably born with a beard and versebook in hand. 

He shunts those thoughts aside and focuses on the task ahead.

They lapse into a familiar pattern: close formation, swivelling eyes, and complete silence. But thus far there’s no menace on the wind. Though the forest’s barren branches grasp at the old road like skeletal hands, it isn’t any creepier than it is on any other day. They walk.

He wishes Reynauld had asked him what he wished for.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning in this chapter for animal death.

_He who makes his ways crooked will be found out._

_\- Proverbs 10_

Dismas has never quite been able to gauge what Reynauld thinks of him. Not that it matters; not that he’s striving to be liked. But in such a small village, and in an even smaller barracks, he doesn’t like any unknowns. He knows exactly where Reynauld stands on aspects of his behaviour of course, because holy men have no shortage of opinions on other people’s goings-on. He knows that Reynauld abhors his drinking and his absence from services. The knight tut-tuts him about fornications and his creative usage of the Lord’s name. But the thing is he does that to everyone. So Dismas has no idea whether any of the tutting pertains specifically to him.

It’s refreshing, being out on the road in the daylight. It isn’t a cramped basement or a dilapidated ruin. Clouds choke most of the morning sun from the sky, but every so often, a sparkle of it makes it through.

The road itself is riddled with tracks, lashed by years of wagon travel, dew still gathered in the ruts. Dismas checks the ground frequently, keeping an eye out for sign of recent passers-by. So far, none.

Behind and to his left, Reynauld stomps along in silence. Were they closer, Dismas might have commented that he should acquire some leathers. That not every battle requires one’s own body weight in plate. If he wore more sensible kit, they’d be making a lot less noise. Less noise is best noise on the road. Army grunts never understand that.

A wooden clunk catches his ear. He signals to Reynauld, then slinks up the road a ways, pressing himself to the trunk of a fungus-pocked tree. Up ahead, he can spy the missing stagecoach. It’s intact, its team standing patiently in their harnesses. But it’s lurched to one side, tilted at an awkward angle.

Ticking his chin to summon Reynauld, he watches the carriage for a moment longer. The coachman is nowhere to be seen, and that’s what gets the hairs on his arms standing at attention. 

Again, were he with a person in sensible armour, some strategy or ambush might have been the order of the day. But instead he’s with Reynauld, which means they come marching up the middle of the road, bare to God and everyone.

Flicker-flutters of déjà vu tickle through Dismas’ brain. It’s a walk he’s taken many times before, pistol in hand and ready for the kill. 

He doesn’t really know what to yell under these circumstances. He won’t be demanding anyone’s valuables. He doesn’t have a years-old script for coming to rescue people. Something clunks beneath the wagon once more. He can tell it’s from the underside.

“Halt!” Reynauld bellows from behind him, the voice ringing off his helm like he’s yelling into a stewpot. “Expose yourself!”

Well that works. Even if Dismas might have phrased it differently. 

A skinny little man wearing the heraldry of their shared employer wriggles out from beneath the wagon, palms raised. His tabard is smeared with mud, but apart from that he appears undamaged. Dismas can’t place his name, but he’s seen the man around town, passed him on the steps down from the brothel a time or two. The coachman recognises them in turn and heaves out a relieved sigh, his narrow shoulders buckling.

“God’s throne,” he curses. “Am I glad to see you lot.”

This is definitely the first time a coachman has ever expressed relief at finding Dismas on the road. This has been a year of firsts.

“Your Lady was concerned at the delay,” Dismas explains. “So ehm. What seems to be the problem?”

The coachman gestures to one side of the vehicle, where it lists. “Hole in the road. Strained the axle. It’s bowed, but not broken. We always travel with spares, but it’s a hard job for one.”

And that’s how Dismas finds himself crawling on hands and knees, slipping beneath the carriage to assist. He isn’t sure he’s got the handyman’s knack, but it would take Reynauld an hour to strip out of his armaments to get down there and help. Mostly his job turns out to be holding things in place while the coachman does the fixing. 

Dismas doesn’t like being on the ground. Not in the road like this, underneath a fat sitting duck of a prize. But the knight stands near the horses, keeping guard, and that’s some comfort. Regardless of how little personal regard they have for one another, he doesn’t doubt Reynauld’s usefulness in battle, nor his resolve. He’s seen it in action. (Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why he’s kept respectful distance, he dimly wonders.)

But even beneath the coach with a workman hammering nearby, his ears are finely attuned to the road. In his youth, he fancied it his web, and he the spider, keen to all vibrations that passed along its surface. He hears clawed feet coming before he sees them.

“Eyes sharp, Buckethead,” he hisses. “We’re about to have company.”

He shoves the coachman down, draws his pistol, then waits, crouched between the wheels. 

With a warbling growl, a ragged dog emerges from the forest, its ears pinned low. Two more flank it not far behind. They’re domestic dogs, Dismas can see, the type with big square jaws and docked ears and tails. They belonged to someone once, but they’re ungroomed, their ribs protruding. Hounds are sensible; they’d never attack a three-man party on the road, especially with horses. They’re either desperate or unaware that Reynauld isn’t traveling alone.

Dismas doesn’t give them a chance to find out. When the first canine leaps for the knight, he puts a bullet through its skull. It topples with a shriek, but the other two are undeterred, advancing. He’s blown the element of surprise, but it squared up the fight, so he considers it worthwhile cost. In his heavy armour, Reynauld is in good shape to defend against claws and teeth, but Dismas has seen how quickly dogs can drag a man down. 

He rolls free of the carriage and takes a knee, reloading. Then he braces himself and fires from the same position. This hit is only a glancing blow, but–

An arc of blood gouts through the air. The knight has swung his heavy sword and nearly cleaved his dog in two. It topples. The one Dismas grazed yips, then runs in a frantic circle. Baying crazily, it throws itself at Reynauld and bowls him over before he can recover enough to prepare a strike. In all that armour, Reynauld goes down hard. The dog’s on him in an instant, slavering and bleeding. And Dismas is there a half-second later.

He rolls and drags his dirk through the beast’s belly, spilling it open like a fish. The dog thrashes as it goes down, crying out, legs spasming fruitlessly as it tangles in its own steaming guts. Dismas springs up to his feet then wipes the flat of his blade on the beast’s furred back. It stops moving.

From below, now slathered in mess, Reynauld grunts out an irascible sound.

“That was not strictly necessary,” he informs Dismas as he rolls the dog’s body off his lap. 

“Sure wasn’t,” Dismas agrees. “If it was strictly duty, they wouldn’t call it showing off now, would they.”

A good scrap always gets his blood up. He wonders if this feeling, this sense of being suffused with energy and purpose, is how Reynauld and Junia feel when they read their verses.

Grinning, he offers a glove down to help the man up.

Reynauld does not take it. Through the narrow aperture of his visor, he appears to be glowering.

“Relax. Bit of guts is nothing new around these parts.” Dismas doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. It’ll wash off.

With great, clunking effort, Reynauld pushes up onto his sabatons and steadies himself. 

“I did not require your assistance,” he says, and there’s something so petulant, so childish about it that Dismas just laughs.

“I didn’t think you were in mortal danger.” He upturns his hands, giving a little palms-only shrug. “Just enjoy a good scrap.”

At that point the coachman intervenes, calling for Dismas to get back to assisting him so they can be on their way. Turning back toward the coach, Dismas pauses before he can put his foot down. He spies something glittering in the muck, a fleck of colour out of place in all the brown. 

It’s a bracelet, a string of faceted garnets and rubies wrought with silver filigree, all circling a central cabochon. The sort of thing he might have snipped off a pretty girl’s wrist in his earlier life. He stoops to collect it, letting out a soft _huh._ Turning the thing over in his hand, he admires how it gleams even when caked with grit.

A large, armoured hand closes around his wrist, grip shockingly tight. Dismas yelps, his fingers flexing, and he lets go of the prize by reflex. Reynauld yanks it from his fingers, wresting the thing away like it were diseased. He secrets it away into his surcoat somewhere, leaving Dismas to stare dumbfounded while rubbing the feeling back into his hand.

“God’s blistered balls,” he grumbles. “I wasn’t going to nick it.”

Reynauld pats himself free of what gore he can, then looks Dismas straight in the eye. “It is an unimaginative mind who takes the Lord’s name in vain,” he says. 

Dismas had been prepared to defend his honour against accusations of thievery. He’d been prepared to point out that in his entire residence in the hamlet, he’d pilfered nothing. So when all Reynauld lobs at him is some bunk about how cursing is bad, it actually trips him up. Blinking, he scrubs a glove over his hair and simply stares.

He can’t think of anything. His mind goes blank. Fuming, he stalks back to the coachman, annoyed that the zealot got one over on him.

 _I let him win that,_ he tells himself as he crawls back under the wagon.

\--//--

Once the axle’s been replaced, the coachman offers them a ride back into town. Dismas has never been one to pass up an opportunity to pass up on physical exertion, so he clambers up onto the pilot’s bench with an easygoing sigh.

“Not up _here_ ,” the coachman corrects him. “Get in the back. My team doesn’t like unfamiliar faces up front.”

Sometimes it feels as though the whole world conspires against him. Dismas squeezes beneath the awning and into the wagon’s cargo hold. It’s packed tight with crates, just enough room for him to clamber around if he bends over double. Reynauld climbs up the back and finds a seat on the back bench, not even attempting to cram his armoured bulk fully inside. Dismas takes up residence on a crate beside him, taking a moment to study the hanging nets nailed to the wall.

All the nets are stocked with fruits and preserves, bottles of chutneys and jams. Nicer stuff than they serve in the House of the Yellow Hand by a fair margin. 

The coach lumbers along, the worn wood beneath him juddering. It’s novel, he has to admit. He hasn’t been inside wagons when they’re moving all that often. And this big, boxy thing designed for freighting goods over people looks dissimilar enough to… certain carriages of his past… that he can look at it without feeling an uncomfortable twist in his guts.

A quarter-hour into the ride, though, his memory does spit something out.

“Hey,” he suddenly says to Reynauld, glancing over. “I know that bracelet.”

The armoured man stiffens and doesn’t look back at him.

“We recovered a set of those things in the tombs,” he says, one shrewd dark eye narrowing. “A choker, a crown, a brooch. Rubies and garnets. Silver wire.” He remembers helping Katharine pry the silver from the carved marble neck of a statue. The head was missing anyway, the tomb it guarded cracked open and ransacked. Their Lady had rewarded them handsomely for carrying back such treasures.

Reynauld’s silence is telling.

Dismas slaps his thigh, cackling. “Hoo boy.” He wipes beneath an eye. “Oh, this is good. This is so good. Holy man’s got sticky fingers.”

He hears rather than sees Reynauld tense up, steel plate grinding even if no movement is apparent.

Brilliant. This is more than just enterainment–though it is also the most entertaining thing Dismas has witnessed in days. This is leverage. And Dismas likes leverage.

He starts to laugh again, but something throws him back against the wall of the cargo hold quicker than he can react. Which is saying something. Reynauld’s got an armoured gauntlet pressed up against his collarbone, pinning him to the wall with a quick clothesline manoeuvre. He leans forward, applying enough pressure that Dismas feels it in his windpipe.

“You’ll not tell a soul,” he whispers. “Or I’ll—” But Dismas cuts him off.

Coughing out a laugh, he shakes his head and straightens a little, just enough to take the pressure off his neck.

“Relax,” he rasps. “You think I’d rat you out?”

“There is no honour among thieves.” Reynauld’s voice is chilly.

“That’s just a dumb saying.” He brings up a hand, applies a little pressure to Reynauld’s forearm, steers it away from himself. “I’ll not tell her.”

He wonders what Reynauld’s face is doing behind that helmet. Is he ashamed? Embarrassed? Or just pissed off? It’s tough to tell by his body language alone. That armour lends even everyday actions a contrivance of aggression. He looks menacing standing still. 

 _Fear,_ he finds himself thinking. _He should be afraid of her._

Apart from the fact that he’s trying his damnedest not to sink back into old habits, Dismas would never steal something that valuable from the Heiress. The rules he lives by couldn’t be codified into a tidy versebook like Reynauld’s, but they’re rules all the same. And chief among them is to never, ever cross someone who exerts that much power over you. With her dilapidated manse and her skeleton crew of staff, he knows the woman’s influence has waned, as has her fortune. But he doesn’t doubt she has resources they’re unaware of. 

That coupled with the ruthlessness she’s exhibited, how callously she disregards human suffering...

“I won’t tell,” he repeats, but this time he means it for an entirely different reason. A reason that sends a cold tickle up his back.

Reynauld holds him pinned a moment longer, then relents, withdrawing his arm. 

Dismas clears his throat. He wants to chase that unease away, wants to steer his thoughts away from their Lady.

“Of course,” he says, attempting to massage his usual bravado back into his voice. “If I refrain from telling her, that’s a favour to you. I’ll keep your secrets, knight, but now it’s a risk to both of us if she finds out, hm?”

Reynauld regards him with stoic indifference.

“You owe me,” he says. “How about you do an old friend a favour in return, eh?”

“I am not your friend.” Reynauld pauses a beat. “But I am listening.”

\--//--

In the wagonyard, they thank the coachman for the lift, then climb down onto the hardpack. Dismas shifts his coat around his shoulders, pivoting to avoid stepping in a heap of manure. Reynauld clunks off alongside him and they leave the porters to do the unpacking. They’re muscle, not labourers, after all.

“Now, you have to admit,” Dismas says, feeling his hands into his pockets, touching at the small glass jars secreted away within. “Not all sins are created equal. This one feels pretty good, don’t it?”

Between the two of them, they’d made off with eight jars of preserves. Enough to enjoy but not enough in a shipment that size that Her Ladyship will miss them. That code Dismas has, it’s… flexible.

Reynauld hinges up the visor of his helm, staring him dead on. His eyes are brown, Dismas thinks. He’d never noticed that before.

“Hardly a sin,” Reynauld says. “More a reward for a job well done.”

Aha, so he was _that_  kind of prigger, was he. The kind who always had a justification. Dismas had known a few of those in his time, thieves who lied about their thievery even to themselves. He watches the knight walk, outpaced by his longer strides.

Men who told themselves their motivations were pure. Who sidestepped their wrongs and purported to walk their own interpretations of the straight and narrow. 

A soft voice snakes treacherous whispers into his mind.  _Sort of like you’re acting about a certain job. About how it had to be a mistake. How it couldn’t possibly have been your fault–_

“Hey, so.” Dismas takes a few hurried steps to catch up. “We oughtn’t bring this back to the barracks where any old interloper could spy it in our trunks.” He narrows an eye, glancing back toward the bridge. “How’s about I stash it somewhere safe.”

Reynauld pauses, then glances toward the low, thatch-roofed hovels where the peasants dwell.

“That seems wise,” he says, like it’s a confession. 

And just like that, they’re in cahoots. 

Dismas gathers all their ill-gotten gains and sets off for the bridge. He’s happy to hide the evidence on his lonesome. Reynauld has sinned enough for one day. Better to ease him into it.

It’s the strangest feeling, this sensation of newfound kinship. They finally have something in common.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

_Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?_

_– Amos 3_

Their mysterious patron rewards Dismas and Reynauld for their service on the road. After Dismas gives his report, she passes him a set of handsome brass buckles, an upgrade over the worn iron that accents his belts. It’s an odd choice of compensation—though she passes over a small purse with it—but he can’t help but feel drawn to the hardware. There’s delicate filigree carved into the surface. The buckles look _old_.

Back in the barracks, he polishes them until they gleam.

That night, Dismas dreams of his mother. And of wagons circled round a fire. When he jerks awake in the dark, gasping, he knows why he’s done it. The weight of metal trinkets and fetishes in hand recalls the night he met Vennisathi, first learned the ways of the Route upon both road and skin.

He never knew his father. He likes to think his mother did, but he can’t be sure. No two stories she told him of the man’s origin were ever the same.

He was ten years old and his little sisters chattered long into the nights, speculating and picking at stories like loose threads in a sleeve. He recalled each tale his mother spun, wondering which hinted at the truth.

_Your father is a sailor, gone to seek terns and albatross on the far side of the world._

_Your father is a physiker, gone to bring his trade to the unfortunates in the south._

_Your father was a visiting diplomat. He’s married now to a duchess in a far-off land._

_Your father is a traveller. Perhaps his caravan will pass through again sometime._

When next the wagons passed through town, Dismas remembers slinking away from his chores early, leaving a pile of wood half-cut. He crept through the forest to where the caravan was circled, watched brightly-clothed figures gather round the central fire. Watched a man stroke a lyre with fingers like lightning. He watched until his knees hurt, until the sun sank low and the fire glowed ever brighter.

“Boy,” said the man with the lightning-fingers, spotting him in the shadows. “Why are you hiding in the dark?”

Dismas didn’t know what to say, so he crept out to join them.

He was unprepared for how bright it was. The colours, from the paint on the wagons to the beads strung about the women’s necks. The flutter of silk cloth on dark-skinned bodies—skin that resembled his own more than he’d ever resembled his neighbours in his town.

The old man—Vennisathi, he’d later learn—pressed a mug of hot mulled cider into Dismas’ hands. He squinted at the boy for a time. Dismas wondered the same things he always did when faced with dark-eyed, olive-skinned men of a certain age: could it be him?

The old traveller seemed to sense his curiosity with some preternatural wisdom. He beckoned Dismas closer, to share his pillow by the fire. Then he took the boy’s hand in his own, cradling the much-smaller palm in the cup of his fingers.

“Fortune is a fickle one.” He dragged a callused fingertip down Dismas’ palm, tracing something. “But she always finds a way to walk the Folk back to our fire.”

“The Folk?” Dismas blinked. The man’s fingers felt strangely cool, especially when the fire should have warmed him.

“Mhm.” A withered finger pointing to Dismas’ skin. “This line in your palm, at your outermost fingers. That’s the Heart Line, boy. If it fractures into two, that foretells heartbreak in your future. But yours, see how it’s split into three?”

Dismas could see. A line arced from the base of his pointer finger out across toward his pinky, shallow and graceful. Toward the edge of his hand, it fractured into three forks like a lightning strike.

“That’s the mark of the Folk,” the old man said in a canny whisper. “Another wayward one found his way home.”

Dismas didn’t quite understand. His eyebrows furrowed as he peered up at the oldster’s venerable face, his sparkling eyes.

“You saying you’re my pops?” he asked, unsure if he even wanted to hope.

The old man closed both his hands around Dismas’, folding his fingers into a loose fist and gripping tight. It was more affection than anyone outside his mother had ever shown him.

“I’m not the man who put you in your mother,” said Vennisathi. “But you’re my chavo all the same.”

Months passed. He couldn’t ever figure out how to broach the subject with his mother. It was hard for a boy of ten to speak on such adult matters.

Every time Vennisathi’s caravan passed through, Dismas would join them for a few nights. He learned the way of the Route—the signs to look for on trees, on stones, tucked away under the gutters of buildings. The tiny carvings that signified safety and danger, shelter and wealth.

Each time, Vennisathi asked if Dismas wanted to join them.

Dismas hesitated for many reasons, from an appropriate level of childhood fear to worry for what would befall his mother and sisters without him. He was growing to resent his mother for hiding the secret of his father’s name, yet he couldn’t abandon her. He was the man of the house, ill-suited to the task as he was.

Dismas learned early that sometimes you hurt the people you love. That care and harm weren’t mutually exclusive.

His heart yearned for the road, to sit beneath the eaves of Vennisathi’s wagon and learn the stories of the Folk. Of _his_ Folk, as he’d taken to calling them in his mind. He often looked upon the triple-pronged line that traced his palm.

There were other reads to the lines in one’s palm, he learned. The forks in your palm print foretold all kinds of things. His Lifeline had a fork, too. And it foretold even sadder things. _You’ve got a foot each in two separate worlds, boy._ He heard Vennisathi’s voice in his ear. _Your fork starts so early on in life that I don’t think the twain shall ever meet._

The meaning behind the words was clear: Dismas didn’t belong at home, but he wouldn’t ever belong fully to the road either. Not as long as loyalty to his family pinned him down.

He awakens to that pinned-down feeling, a stab through his sternum as keen as any knife. The room around him is quiet and dark, the barracks gone to sleep. Embers glow weakly in the hearth and all around him sleeping bodies breathe and snore.

Stealing up out of his bunk, he tells himself he just needs a piss and then he’ll get back to bed. He creeps past the washroom and in through the mess hall, intent on slinking out the back door. But something catches him short.

The long, narrow mess hall is home to a small kitchen and a few long tables. Nobody sits at any of them at this late an hour, but a lone figure crouches by the kitchen fire, tending a pot that boils on the spit above the coals.

It’s Barristan, one of the many mercenaries his patron has called to the hamlet for her expeditions. He’s a stout, wide-framed man, one of the few in the barracks who’s actually older than Dismas. He’s all hard angles and wiry, tangled beard, gazing into the pot with his sole remaining eye as one hand stirs listlessly with a wooden spoon.

“D’I wake you?” he asks without looking up.

Dismas gives his head a quick shake. He takes a step closer to the fire, rolling up the sleeves of his woollen undershirt.

“Nah.” He sniffs the air. “Odd hour for cooking, friend.”

A deep chuckle resonates in Barristan’s chest. He shakes his head, withdrawing the spoon from the pot. He flips it in-hand to show it to Dismas, a small measure of deep brown-red liquid evident within. It looks like broth, perhaps, but thicker. It sure doesn’t smell edible, though, some strange acrid tang wafting off it and tickling Dismas’ nose.

“Those nuts that grow on the trees outside of town,” Barristan explains. “If you boil them down, they make a handsome ink. Or in this case, with a sachet of acid, a fine stain for leather.”

He doesn’t really know why Barristan is telling him all this. Possibly because it’s how some in the hamlet cope—conversation, sharing, camaraderie. People who aren’t Dismas, at least. He’s still trying to get used to all that.

“Huh,” he says. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a leatherworker.”

On his idle days, Dismas has spent some time observing his fellows. When his mind is given to imaginative wanderings, he tries to guess at their histories, the things that brought them here. Barristan, with his military bearing and his prowess with a mace, had always struck him as an old soldier. Perhaps a man due for retirement but hungry for one last noble crusade. Him working a trade doesn’t really fit that. Where Dismas grew up, men who wear shining armour and ride to battle on horses are moneyed, not the sort who toil with their own hands.

“My old Captain insisted that each of us learn something,” Barristan explains. “So that when you’re laid up or the weather keeps you shackled to camp, you can still make yourself useful.”

“Huh.” Dismas takes a minute to chew on that.

He imagines a cluster of soldiers in their lean-tos, all making griddlecakes and knitting jumpers and staining leather.

It brings to mind the gatherings around Vennisathi’s fire.

Dismas rubs at his chest like something’s struck him.

“Interesting,” he finally says. “So… why are you doing it in the middle of the night?”

Barristan gives him a look, his single eye squinting with amusement beneath his heavy, pensive brow. “You ah, get the acid sachets from boiling urine. Rather not do that when we’re sizzling and frittering at breakfast, eh.”

Dismas claps the back of a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh. The sound comes out rather like the noise a crow makes, a single coughed-out _caw_.

“Well,” he says. “I’ll leave you to that, old man.”

He isn’t really friends with anyone in this place, but he and Barristan each have a comfortable understanding of where the other man sits in the world. Dismas isn’t quite sure _respect_ is the word, but it’s an understanding.

He creeps out back and relieves himself at the latrine, then when he steps back toward the door, he notices creeping smudges of pre-dawn pink across the sky.

Almost first light, then. He decides he may as well stay awake. Put the bathwater on and treat himself to the first scrub of the day, maybe. He rarely gets the warm water due to his habit of sleeping in.

All throughout his morning, memories of music by firelight and thoughts of Barristan tanning leather vie for dominance in his mind. It’s a strange juxtaposition, but he can see why Barristan reminds him of Vennisathi: the grey hair, that world-weary wisdom, the kind eyes.

He’s dressed before most in the barracks have even fully roused themselves, although he can hear Junia’s quiet prayers floating in from the alcove. The religious types in the camp always seem to be the earliest risers.

This is further evidenced by the first person he runs into upon setting foot outside: Reynauld, who is standing on the stoop with a hatchet braced across his shoulders.

Dismas pauses on the threshold, tilting his head. The other man hasn’t seen him yet.

Even when he isn’t suited up in all his plate, Reynauld’s physique has a certain commanding presence. He’s a big guy, evidenced in more than just the breadth of his shoulders and the hard-earned cords of muscle up his back. There’s just something solid about him. Like even his bones would weigh more than an average man’s.

Unlike some of them, Reynauld seems to be flourishing in this place. He’s lost some of the pot belly that he had when he arrived. He’s trimmed his beard. He’s even gained a shine of a tan on his cheeks, likely due to the hours he spends splitting firewood and working on restoring the old abbey.

For now, he stands with his face turned toward the rising sun, the haft of his axe resting comfortably across his back. He’s only wearing an undershirt, and Dismas takes a moment to brazenly admire the view, the confluence of sun and shadow on skin.

Hey, it’s not like he’s ever gonna know.

Clearing his throat to announce himself, he steps into the man’s peripheral vision. There’s only so long he can let himself loiter and look before it becomes blatant.

“Hell of a sunrise this morning, eh?” He says it casually enough, planting his hands on his hips.

Reynauld glances sideways toward him. His profile has a patrician cragginess to it. He’s like a big, handsome boulder.

“I did not see the sunrise,” he says. “I was sequestered for my morning prayers, and then my calisthenics.”

“Oh.” Dismas rocks back on his heels, not really sure what to say to that.

He isn’t sure about a lot of things—why he’s even making this conversation, for starters. Like filching some jam with a man and waking up at the same time somehow makes them comrades. It’s a daft notion. The second he starts to actually _speak_ to Reynauld, it becomes immediately apparent that nothing has changed. He’s always been a sort of brick wall. Those brainwashed religious types always are. Hard to converse with a man raised on aphorisms, a man never allowed an independent thought in his life.

“So, chopping wood then?” His eyes follow the line of the axe’s haft and the softer lines of skin and shoulder beneath. Meanwhile, his stupid mouth flaps without his brain’s permission.

“Indeed.” Reynauld eases the axe down off his shoulder and turns a look to Dismas that’s equal parts intrigued and baffled. “It’s a small kindness I can perform for the worshippers in this town, to keep the transept warm. Is this your way of offering to help?”

He recalls the pile of half-cut wood, abandoned outside his mother’s home.

He recalls the crackle of Vennisathi’s fire, the way that sitting there kindled a warmth in him that radiated from the inside rather than from the flames.

He recalls Barristan tending coals, his quiet ruminations on usefulness even in times of peace.

Rubbing his scarred and battered knuckles, Dismas grins with half his mouth.

“Well,” he says, like it was what he intended all along. “Can’t have you hogging all the splinters to yourself, can I?”

\--//--

Adulthood had a way of easing the pains of childhood inadequacy. Bodies grew stronger, taller. Minds grew sharper. Pockets grew heavier. Many of Dismas’ worst childhood ailments seemed laughably inconsequential by the time life dragged him kicking and screaming into his twenties.

Chopping wood, though? That was still a bloody slog.

And the worst part? Reynauld seemed to _enjoy_ that sloggy nature of it. The fact that it was such boring, repetitive drudgery seemed to be what he enjoyed the most about it. The longer they worked, the more relaxed he grew, like performing acts of mind-numbing menial labour was his equivalent of Junia’s meditation.

They’ve been at it for less than an hour and already Dismas has sweated through his undershirt. He rolls up his sleeves, dabbing at his brow. He’s fit enough for a man of his years, but it’s the wiry sort of fitness that comes from long hours on the road and a need for nimble feet. He isn’t built like Reynauld, whose workman’s figure wouldn’t look out of place threshing wheat for hours a day.

“You’re enjoying this,” Dismas can’t help but say, and he says it like it’s an accusation.

Reynauld braces a log upon an old stump, then cleaves it in twain with a single splitting strike.

“Service unto others is rewarded in the hereafter,” he says.

God’s eyes, he’s just reciting something some abbot rambled in his ear. Dismas again recalls why he decided weeks ago that conversing with Reynauld was an exercise in masochism.

Slowly, he slides his tongue over his teeth. When he flits his eyes back over, he notices that Reynauld is watching him.

“If you’re only doing it on account of some reward in the hereafter, is it really a righteous act, though?” Dismas can’t help himself. He’s never met a hornet’s nest his feet didn’t itch to kick. “Is it really altruism if you’re performing it with your eyes on a prize?”

Reynauld’s eyes tighten in a little flinch. He looks sincerely hurt by that, though his mouth flattens and his brow goes stern in short order.

“You mock me for my faith,” he says.

And Lord, Dismas can’t stop kicking. He can’t stand it, how God-botherers never think through to the logical ends of the shit they spout.

“It’s not your faith,” he says with a cant of his head. “It’s the implication of what you’ve said. The philosophy behind the curtain. Who wants to live in a world where people are only good to one another because they want rewards in Heaven?”

“Acts of service are all equal under the Light,” says Reynauld, and Dismas hates that he sounds so calm. “If the faithful of this village find themselves warmed on a frosty morning by a fire in the hearth, does it matter whose hand cut the wood? Does it matter why?”

Dismas’ molars clack together. He works his jaw for a moment. It matters. Of _course_ it matters. He just finds in the moment that he can’t articulate why. He’s always sensed in Reynauld a profound selfishness that hides beneath the skin of every charitable thing the man does. Which makes him no different to any other preacher Dismas has ever crossed paths with.

“It matters,” Dismas says. “It matters because it’s _dishonest_ otherwise.”

Ha. Who is he to lecture a man about honesty? Yet despite the pile of deception he’s built his life upon, despite the near-infinite lies that have tumbled from his mouth with ease, Dismas has always tried to be honest with _himself_. Reynauld seems content to turn his gaze wholly outward, chopping wood for the abbey and the barracks with nary a self-reflection in sight. It grates on Dismas like walking barefoot on gravel.

What grates on him more is that Reynauld doesn’t seem miffed at him. There was that flicker of hurt across his eyes and then nothing. He regards Dismas for a quiet moment, hands still wrapped around the haft of the axe.

Dismas recalls so many nights as a boy, smashing the blade of his mother’s hatchet through half-rotted firewood, his arms quaking with the effort. He recalls the anger that fuelled him, and the peaceful slope of Reynauld’s shoulders is jarring.

“The Light shines through any veil we don, Dismas.” Reynauld’s voice is quiet, patient. “It can peer through any armour we wear, any walls we erect. It sees us as we are regardless of how we see ourselves—and it will judge us thusly.”

The sweat that dampens Dismas’ shirt feels suddenly cold. An unpleasant shiver licks up his spine.

That’s a completely fucked thing to say. Yet Reynauld smiles a little after saying it. A sad-eyed smile, like a man trying to take comfort in a thing that’s grinding his soul to dust.

Dismas can’t bear to stand there a second longer. All of that is fucked.

Tossing his own hatchet aside, he crouches and grabs an armful of split wood. He stacks load after load of it into a woven basket, quick enough that he drops a few pieces. Quick enough that splinters dig into his palms and forearms, sharp as needles.

Heaving up the basket with a grunt of effort, he sets off toward the road, brittle grass crunching under his boots. He offers no parting words. Before he’s out of earshot, he hears the telltale _shunk_ of a blade biting through timber, rhythmic as a heartbeat. It chases him out of the yard like a reprimand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued thanks to A for beta reading, and thanks for the kudos and comments! It’s encouraging.
> 
> I don’t know why, but from the very beginning of my first playthrough of DD I’ve headcanoned Dismas as mixed race, possibly because many socially outcast people born in the ~various periods DD kind of takes place in at once~ were often denied legitimate employment opportunities, which led to some taking to a life of crime. During times of peace, brigandage of all varieties was often blamed on whatever local immigrant group currently drew the majority’s ire, be it the Italians or the Catalans or Roma or Greeks or Irish Travellers. 
> 
> Anyway thank u for attending my Dismas TED talk, god bless.


	4. Chapter 4

_For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places._

_– Ephesians 6_

Sunset has washed the clouds an anaemic pink by the time Baldwin’s coach rolls into civilisation. Or at least as close to civilisation as he’s been in weeks. The driver directs him over an ancient stone bridge, its guard house abandoned, gates hanging sadly ajar.

So this is Vorstowe.

He calmly closes the small, green-bound copy of _The Confessions_ that had rested against his knee for the majority of the journey. Reading had turned out to be an impossible task, given the dim light and general shudder of motion. But he likes the feel of a book in hand, so he hadn’t put it away. The crisp corners of the covers and the crinkle of the pages, it’s a sensation his condition has yet to steal from him. A simple pleasure to be enjoyed whenever one can manage.

Beyond the screened window, Vorstowe looks even sadder than he imagined. The letter of entreaty from its Lady had painted a bleak picture, but it appears things have deteriorated further still since her missive. He hopes the barren fields outside are merely lying fallow for a season to restore fertility. Otherwise, what are these people even eating?

The ragged rooftops, the dilapidated clapboards, the eaves thick with cobwebs… he can tell at a glance that much of this place had been abandoned. Where light should have shone through windows this time of evening, most of the huts and houses he passes are dark, their windowpanes like the gaping, lightless sockets of so many skulls.

He came alone, and the wagonyard where the coach comes to rest is also empty. This pleases Baldwin well enough, sparing him any required social encounters and allowing his mind to rest in quiet. He tips the coachman, maintaining his silence, and pulls the beaten bronze mask down over his features.

Hauling a heavy scabbard over one shoulder and his rucksack over the other, Baldwin steps out of the carriage and onto Vorstowe’s frost-chilled soil. Even the dirt somehow seems to repel life, like it’s shying away from his boot and back into the earth.

It isn’t long before a servant in black and purple heraldry arrives, out of breath and bending at the waist. Baldwin stiffens at the bow. It has been some time since someone bowed to him.

“You need not prostrate yourself,” he says.

The man obeys to the tune of rising off the ground, but he does not seem to absorb the lesson behind the words, for he answers with a swift _yes milord._ Baldwin gathers his shroud around his shoulders, hunching his bandaged arms beneath its drape. The feeling in his arms comes and goes but cold always seems to seep its way through. Like cold is sensed by something in the body separate to the thing that senses pain.

\--//-- 

Baldwin prefers to walk the path to the manor, waving off the footman’s offer to send for a carriage. After such a long ride, his legs are stiff. And a walk allows him to survey more of his new… well, he hesitates to use the word _home_. The place where he will reside until the task is finished.

The rot that grips the fields and huddled houses has spread throughout the fixtures of the town. The church’s roof buckles like an overburdened shelf. The cobbles of the roads bear some strange, deep craters, the type a siege engine would leave behind. Vorstowe is an unimportant speck on the map, yet the damage it has suffered recalls sketches Baldwin had seen in his youth: artists’ renditions of the sieges at Constantinople and Jerusalem.

The hilly road up to the manor is steeper than he anticipated, but beneath where his disease has defiled him, he is a fit man. The servant is out of breath by the time they ascend the hillock; Baldwin is not.

He tilts his masked face upward to take in the full panorama of the gardens and the manor. While a token effort has been paid to keeping the growth at bay, nature is busy subsuming the Estate grounds back into its twisting, viney grasp. Creepers choke the hedges and statuary alike. A fountain burbles half-heartedly, choked with algae, the sound of it like the last gasping breaths of someone drowning.

The manor sags like the body of an aged man, like the skeleton inside is stronger than its trappings, like good bones are the only thing keeping it together. The extent of the decay is such that, for the first time, Baldwin wonders why the new mistress of these parts is even trying. There is something to be said for attempting to restore your old home to its former glory, but even the Romans knew when to leave rubble as rubble and rebuild next door.

Ushered inside by a new bevy of servants, these paler and clad in dark linen and wool, Baldwin takes a deep breath. His sense of smell is impeded both by the progression of his condition and the mask he wears, but even he can smell the mildew. It’s a heavy presence, masked by an even heavier fug of incense.

He smells geranium and lily, neroli and galbanum resin. A familiar recipe to those who have walked through Orthodox cathedrals. Is his hostess catering to him, then? That edges a smile up the leper’s chapped, dry mouth. He can’t decide if he’s flattered by the gesture, amused, or inclined to pity her.

The Heiress waits in a sitting room at the end of a seemingly endless series of antechambers. The house seems designed to eschew all sense of order and direction. Instead of tidy wings, its interior is an endless duodenum of passages. In better times, this might have had the desired effect of impressing guests with the sheer size and scope of the sprawl.

Now, though, he just wonders what one woman does with all this empty, cobwebbed space.

A pair of high-backed armchairs flank the hearth in this small, wooden-walled space. The fireplace is carved of a pale pink marble that recalls the watered-down sunset outside. In one of the chairs sits a woman, though the seat is angled so that Baldwin cannot see her face from where he stands, only the spread of skirts and the gleam of silver boot-buckles.

The servant executes an economical bow, then steps aside.

“Presenting the Crown Prince of Chalcedon, Keeper of the Seven Icons, Lord Las—”

Baldwin’s voice booms from behind the man and over his head, startling him out of his skin. “You mistake me for another.”

The servant cuts himself off. He stays there, prostrated on the floor, and his throat visibly works up and down while he swallows.

“Forgive my servant,” says the seated woman. “Shall I have him disciplined, my Lord?”

Baldwin remains exactly where he stands and does not move. He may as well be one of the garden statues. Deep down, a part of him recoils in annoyance that hearing his old name spoken aloud has actually startled him. But he reconciles it in his mind thusly: it is natural to be startled by things one is not expecting. That does not give them power over you.

“To err is human,” he says to both his host and her help. “You are both mistaken and also forgiven. I am Lord over no man.”

Fine-boned fingers shoo the servant away in a little sweeping flick. Baldwin steps around the chair as the man skitters off. Finally, he gets a good look at the woman who sent for him.

She’s younger than he anticipated, with an untidy nest of dark auburn hair—more brown than red—piled atop her head and secured with a halo of pins. It gives her the look of a bedraggled saint in some church window, an impression furthered by her haunted eyes and the glass-sharp edges of her face. While she is young, Saundrène-Manon Darkest is not youthful.

“I must apologise.” Her voice is soft, reserved in a way that her direct eye contact is not. “When I sent word to your mother, I wasn’t informed of your chance in circumstances.” A pause. She looks away. “Truthfully, I received no reply at all.”

Baldwin isn’t sure whether the innocence is an act, but then again, that hardly matters. Either she _is_ contrite or she’s making a show of it. Both are acceptable.

“I have not gone by that name in some time,” he says.

When she upturns a hand and gestures to the chair opposite her own, he sinks into it. Despite the musty scent of the upholstery, the frame is solid and the stuffing is soft. He eases down, enjoys the warmth of the fire. It would be a breach of protocol for her to ask exactly what had happened to him, why he no longer carries those titles. And while he gets the feeling that Vorstowe is a place far beyond the bounds of most protocols, she respects this one.

“Yet you came.”

He inclines his head, almost as much a bow as a nod. “Yes.”

She takes a moment then to study him from head to toe, starting at his feet and ending at his mask. “If you no longer answer to that name and you are no longer Lord over any men, what exactly _should_ I call you?”

Beneath the polished bezel of his mask, his mouth forms a polite smile. “Baldwin.”

Her expression changes minutely: a slight squint of eyes, a slight upnod of acknowledgment.

“It makes a certain point.” She sounds approving, not that her approval matters one bit to him. “So is that what you do now—fight battles for the Church?”

In this part of the world, the Church is a singular noun, where everyone knows which church you reference. For a moment, he’s mystified by the simplicity of that. But then he scolds himself—he’s seen the village these people call home. He’d be heartless to deride any aspect of their existence as easy.

Either way, no, he had not chosen his namesake for the man’s status as a revered crusader. He laces his gloved fingers in his lap, sitting otherwise motionless.

“I do not define myself that way,” he says. “On whose behalf I fight at any moment is irrelevant. What matters is that irredeemable evil besieges this earth. Innocents are harrowed by it. To rid the world of evil is to relieve it of suffering, and that is all any truly noble man should strive toward.”

Saundrène’s thin eyebrows lift, then pull together as he speaks. Her mouth hangs open a little. Perhaps she thought he simply wanted money.

\--//--

In the end, the briefing she gives him is not dissimilar to many others he’s sat through. It is as he expected: a corruption seeps through these lands, its source unknown. He doesn’t envy Saundrène’s position. She inherited this mess through no fault of her own, unless one subscribes to Calvinist notions about predestination and sin. Baldwin does not.

It goes by many names, he informs her, the aged evil that bubbles up through the crust of the earth in these ungodly little pockets. Further north of here, they’d call it _Faulen_ or _Verderben_. He has never been to England, but they have names for it over there as well.

Whatever name she chooses to call it by, he will cull it. This he promises her. He didn’t answer her letter on account of the old history between their families, nor out of any sense of propriety. It is simply a task he will perform because raising a blade against such things is the best use of his remaining time. He does not tell her that part, how his choices are informed by the fear that his body may not be long for this earth. While she may be his ally in this place, she is not a friend.

When the exhaustion of the road catches up to him and he moves to take his leave, she offers him a room in her manor.

“I believe I shall take my lodgings with the others on your crusade,” Baldwin says, inclining his head. “It feels only right.”

Saundrène regards him with pursed lips and a doubtful tilt to her eyes. “That barracks is no place for a prince,” she informs him.

“Then it will suit me fine,” says Baldwin, loath to remind her again that any titles he once held are as dust.

She lets him go, although not without preparing a writ with her seal upon it. He may no longer be her peer in terms of title, but she can’t seem to let herself treat him as a simple mercenary. As she impresses her signet into the wax, she all but begs him to use her funds as he sees fit, mumbles something about how it’s nigh time the riff-raff acquired some real leadership.

Baldwin is eager to meet the riff-raff.

He meets two of them sooner than expected.

En route back to the hamlet from the Estate, his ears prickle at what appears to be an altercation fomenting on the road. He does not hurry toward it because frankly his joints are not in the mood, but he diverts the porters following in his wake down the main street past the inn. He instructs them to take his things to the barracks, then turns toward the sound of raised voices.

“You need not be such a wretched shite about it!” a woman is busy hollering.

Baldwin rounds a corner and finds a towering, brassy-haired woman standing over a shorter, shrewd-eyed fellow in the road. She has her hair all in braids and her cloak and dress bear the foxfur mantles common to Hallstatt fashion. A barbarian of some variety. She seems furious, but then those types frequently are.

The man, who holds a basket against his chest, regards her with a wary squint and apathetic silence. When she’s done with her invectives, he shakes his head.

“I’m just saying _I don’t do that anymore_. Not as a favour, not as anything. Whatever you’ve heard, you’re mistaken.” His face is shadowed in the lamplight that shines through the windows, the street around them otherwise dark as pitch. He sounds tired.

That does not seem to be the correct answer, for the woman takes a threatening step toward him.

“So now you call me a liar, bandit?”

Baldwin doesn’t plan on intervening, but the man notices him then. He looks away from the woman and all her fury, and that takes the wind out of her sails. She follows his glance, and soon they’re both staring at Baldwin rather than preparing to flay one another’s skin off.

“Good evening,” he says, though it is well and truly nighttime.

The dark-eyed man sniffs the air and looks Baldwin over as though he’d just spoken a foreign language.

“Sanitarium’s that way, mate,” he says, jabbing a red-gloved finger down the road.

Baldwin follows the gesture, glancing off into the murk. He can’t even see a building in that direction. But he notes it in the back of his mind for future reference, in case it is ever necessary. He looks back to the man, who stands about chest-height to him. He cranes his head down so that they can make eye contact.

“I appreciate that,” he says, “but my final destination is the mercenary barracks.”

“ _Lalor_.”

The woman says a word he doesn’t recognise, but she spits toward Baldwin’s feet and that’s a universal enough gesture. She sweeps an arm at him and whirls, her leather-bound cloak billowing dramatically.

When she stalks off into the night, leaving he and the short man alone in the road, Baldwin can’t help but laugh. It isn’t a loud laugh, just a muted chuckle behind the bronze of his mask, but at the sound of it, the other man’s mouth curves up a little.

“Yep,” he says. “Ol’ Aibreann has a stick the _entire_ way up her arse.”

 “Duly noted.”

The man offers Baldwin a hand, as if to shake it. Then he glances at it like he had second thoughts but they caught up to him a little too slow. Yet despite that momentary wobble, he leaves his hand up, inviting. There are places in the world where touching one whose body is maligned as Baldwin’s constitutes an act of self-defilement. He wonders if this man is defying such customs or merely ignorant. Either is an intriguing proposition.

Baldwin takes his hand, notes the man doesn’t squeeze. They shake, slowly, and it’s a novel thing. Before he grew ill, people did not shake Baldwin’s hand because of who he was. Once he fell sick, people did not touch him because of what he’d become.

“Uh, welcome?” says the man, like it’s a question.

“Welcoming is not a word I would ascribe to the atmosphere of this place.” He pauses. “I am Baldwin, and I have come to assist your Lady in her quest to cut out the rot.”

“Dismas.” The man releases his hand. “I’m… yeah, also that.” He shifts the basket into his other arm, clearly struggling with the weight of it. When Baldwin peers inside, he sees that it’s stacked with kindling. He wonders what favour the woman had asked of him but he keeps that curiosity to himself.

“You’ve just come in on the coach, then?” Dismas asks.

Baldwin makes an affirmative sound. “Yes. I met with the Lady Saundrène and have come to retire for the night.”

“It’s quite a journey,” Dismas agrees. “Even for a man who’s… unafflicted with any nonsense.” He waves a hand about his own face as if to indicate Baldwin’s mask. There was a time in Baldwin’s life when he would have found that terribly offensive, a person openly discussing his disease as _some nonsense_ while he stood right before them. But now, years later, he finds the casual crassness of it almost relieving.

“How’s about I drop this off at the Hand and show you around, eh?”

Baldwin can think of worse ways to learn the lay of the land. He accepts the invitation, standing just outside while Dismas delivers the basket of firewood to what appears to be the town’s local drinking establishment. The crowd inside sounds raucous; Baldwin is too tired from his journey to step into that mess. Dismas isn’t long though. He emerges from the building with a different basket under his arm, this one covered with a woven towel and smelling strongly of bread.

“There’s only one oven in this entire damned town,” he says. “If we keep his fire stoked, ol’ Perry keeps us in bread.”

“A sensible arrangement.” Baldwin is quickly getting the impression that Dismas talks just to talk. Which is fine enough; spending time around those sorts is a clever way to absorb local knowledge.

He studies the man’s back as he walks down the road, seeming unconcerned by the darkness. He moves like a man accustomed to facing such things head on, slinking neither toward nor away from the patches of light on the street. His clothes are rather shabby, but his boots are crafted from thick, well-oiled leather and the soles are intact.

“So what brings you to this place?” Baldwin asks from behind him, his pace a sedate stroll.

“Oh, you know.” Dismas doesn’t glance back. “I end up where I end up.”

“Don’t we all.”

They near a long, low building, its foundation dug deep into the earth for insulation. Warm light shines out of its thin, shuttered windows. Baldwin reaches around Dismas to pull open the door, the other man burdened as he is with his bread. That earns him a weird, squint-eyed little glance, but he lets his mask absorb the look impassively. Dismas is unused to basic manners, then. That says a lot about the people who inhabit this place.

“Well,” Dismas says. “Here’s home.”

Baldwin has ceased to feel fear when he arrives in a new place. He has stared down many a monster in his time, both creatures of true evil born in the earth’s dark heart and mere men who are driven to monstrous things. He wonders only whether this will be the place where his end meets him. And if that is how it must be, he only hopes that he is able to burn the corruption out with him.

He holds the door open for Dismas and steps inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like the game itself, I know I have fucked with history immensely. Welcome to a world where Chalcedon and Calvinism coexist.

**Author's Note:**

> Haaay thank you for climbing into the Darkest Dumpster to read my trash. This is my first fic and I don’t know anyone here and I’m lost as fuuuuck. 
> 
> Big thanks to my beta, A. 
> 
> I’m gonna try to update this once or twice a week as time permits.
> 
> I’m @palicusgracilis on twitter and tumblr if you wanna get cozy.


End file.
